Cheap Thrills, Mostly
by p for pseudonymous
Summary: Mackenzie Plum has a bounty hunter for a mom and a surplus of crazy in her life: "What do you want?" ... "Cheap thrills, mostly."
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: It should be noted that this document is a work of fanfiction and therefore any recognizable characters, events, ect. do not belong to me.

Note: You may recognize some of the writing as a bit of it did come from _Sizzling Sixteen _but I do not plan on following that story line.

* * *

Cheap Thrills, Mostly

* * *

My mother's Uncle Pip died and left her his lucky bottle. She got the better end of the deal over my Great Grandma Mazur whom received his false teeth, pink and sticky with a dead man's saliva. Mom passed the bottle over to me; she said she never found any luck in it but perhaps I would. When you're a still teenager you need all the luck you can get. I still haven't found any yet, though. Instead, the lucky bottle sits on the cramped square window ledge in the top corner of my room; it's the size and shape of a beer bottle and looks hand-blown from red glass. One day I picked a flower from the neighbor's garden, petals still clasped in a single embrace until they bloomed in a final moment of repreive, but the stopper wouldn't catch and the flower was left to wilt without a glass of water or the neck of a bottle to support its flaccid stem.

My name is Mackenzie Plum, and my living arrangements consist of my Mother's bare-bones apartment on the outer edge of Trenton, New Jersey, as well as my father's house that he inherited from his late Aunt Rose. I suppose there is a certain trend within the deceased of my family. My parents each live very separate from the other, different homes and different lives. Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only thing holding them together. I wonder that about a lot of things.

It is a Monday morning in mid June, the summer just before my junior year of High school. The air hangs heavy and stagnant, the heat condensing upon my skin, and sweat beading on the backs of my knees. Lula stands in the apartment, hands on hips, her plus size body stuck fast within her size zero bright-spandex outfit. "What's the mini-me doing tonight?"

I strain my neck from my spot of the coach, the rest of my body lying flat as the heat within the summer air, "I'm going to a party." My best friend Cherry had called earlier that afternoon to notify me of our plans, and yes, that _is_ her real name. Cherry is one grade above me but only older by a few months, her sixteen years compared to my lengthening fifteen. She's wild.

Lula _oohs_. "What are you wearing?"

I shrug.

"Do you need a new outfit? We could go to the mall today." Lula holds her car keys up and they rattle in her hands, it's as if both the action and the sound are a reminder to the fact that she is the only one with a car at the moment; Mom's is dead and I'm without a vehicle of my own. Mom says no to the shopping trip, which is a surprising pass-up on a new pair of shoes—she says that Connie sounded frantic on the telephone—and then I'm left alone.

It's after a lazy length of time within the silence and the heat, me watching through the window for Cherry's car; though, it's really more her fathers, a convertible, leather seats, and painted silver. It is far more sophisticated than anything a high school student would purchase on their own, but we pretend sometimes that our lives bend around things more substantial than what our parents allow.

My cell phone rings, the only steady noise besides my thick breaths and the turn of the hamster, Rex's, wheel behind the walls of his glass aquarium. "I just saw your Mother outside the bakery," Dad says.

My parents seem to have a history revolving around that bakery but I've never been told exactly how. Grown ups like to keep things from kids even long after they may be considered old enough to know. "She better of gotten me a Boston Cream," I say.

"She did but I ate it," he admits casually, like the sugar in his veins has made it too hard to care. "What are you doing tonight?"

I fiddle with my hands but I don't have much to grasp hold to. "Going to the bakery with you for a Boston Cream donut." Given my options between a party and a donut I choose the ladder. The single vice of sugared dough is impervious when compared to that of teenage wiles.

"Can't do, I'm working."

"I'll find better plans."

"Better than your old man?"

"Yeah." Phone conversations are always pulled shorter than the time shared between us, two lives glutted with mania that will later be seen as unimportant, contrary to our current beliefs. But teenagers are never meant to spend so much time with their parents; or at least, that's what they tell me.

Cherry pulls up in the car that belongs to her father but receives more mileage from her foot on the gas pedal. Her arrival either happens in time with or signals the end of my father and I's conversation because that's when I click the end button.

Cherry has hair the same color that her name implies and she can tie fruit stems with her tongue. It's a skill I have attempted but never succeeded at. She looks incredibly like her own father. She seems to get most things from him: pale skin, freckles, fiery hair with a temper to match, a silver car, and a pocket full of hot cash. Her plain brown eyes come from her mother and she tells me the talent with the fruit stems came from her third boyfriend. She always has liked that term: third time's a charm. She has charm herself, Cherry, its seen in the way she gets what she wants, or right now how she peers at me above the rim of her dark sunglasses, a smirk upon her lips. People like Cherry don't smile, not really, not when you have sharp teeth that belong to a predator. I don't open the door to the convertible but rather hop over it, a single movement I hope looks as cool as it makes me feel.

Cherry drives fast; she says if you own a car like this you have to. I ask her about tickets, what she does if she's pulled over. She says she has her ways. I don't ask about those ways.

We're at a stoplight when Cherry has me reach around the back of her seat and grab something. It's all wrapped up in a crinkled brown paper bag and smells stark like the doctor's office but with poorer intentions. "What's this," I ask, my mouth sort of hanging open and slack jawed.

"Hell, Mack, whaddya think it is?"

She rolls down the paper of the bag, which is soft enough not to tear in her hands from summer sweat and warm skin, to reveal the clear glass lip of a bottle. I don't think it's a lucky bottle either.

"You can't drink and drive," I tell her. The light turns green and the car pulls away from the white line like a speedster in a drag race, swerving a bit when Cherry switches hands on the wheel.

"What, are you a cop?" She scoffs, her eyes scrunching closed for a moment, and the car swerves again, the same movement that takes my heart.

"No but my dad is!"

Jersey has stop-and-go traffic and we get caught at another red light, the car jerking forward as Cherry hits the breaks. Another commuter one car over whistles at us over our bickering. "You can't even drive sober," I inform her, crossing my arms over my chest in the same way I do when I'm upset with my parents.

"Shut up or get out," she snaps, taking one large gulp from the bottle just to make her point. I catch a glimpse of liquid like caramel but nowhere near as sweet.

I laugh at her, humorously, like my dad does at my mom when he gets real mad. Cherry retaliates by leaning across me and throwing the door open wide, kicking her foot up over the dash and digging it into my side, using her own door as leverage to shove me out of mine. Both of us are screaming at each other the entire time and I've uncrossed my arms to grip the back of my seat, fingernails leaving crescent shaped dents in the leather.

"You're ruining my daddy's car!" She hollers and then gives one last heave. I go rolling out of the car like humpty dumpty, gravel digging into the backs of my thighs and pavement scorching my palms. I scramble up onto the sidewalk as she goes speeding away.

The rest of traffic stalls and I look up wide eyes at the man in a shiny black SUV that has stopped beside me, replacing the spot that Cherry had once been in. I don't recognize the person in the driver's seat but I can see one of the Rangeman guys in the passenger side.

Ranger is the other man in my mother's life, besides my dad. He's former Special Forces, currently runs and owns the security firm Rangeman, and is drop-dead handsome in a dark Latino kind of way. But I don't pick sides and my mom doesn't seem to either. He drives expensive black cars, wears only black clothes, and has a thing for my mom. Hal, on the other hand, is a real sweetie but he's built like a stegosaurus.

He waves me over and I hop in just as the light turns yellow; the traffic lined up behind the SUV starts honking.

"Hey," I say, and buckle in.

"Hey yourself. We were just going to check on your mom."

My mom has worked as a bounty hunter for her cousin Vinnie ever since she got laid off from the lingerie department in Macy's. Generally this entails her apartment and or car getting blown up on a frequent basis, getting shot at, and crazy mass murders calling our home phone only to breath heavily into the receiver. A lot of people in at my school think it's exciting; though, most of them listen to their parents and agree that the Plum family is one to stay away from. I'm not quite sure whom I agree with yet.

The second Rangman guy, built just as monstrously as Hal but less friendly, parks the car in front of an apartment building that looks like the Tower of Terror only the tower part isn't exactly accurate. It is four stories tall, black with grime, and slightly lopsided. We can hear gun shots go off from the inner quarters, sharp and fast, and I can almost see the light of them behind my eyelids. Hal and the other guy take off running, but not before ordering me to stay put, only, I don't listen to directions very well; at least, that's what all my teachers write on my report cards.

Hal throws the door open and it swings on its hinges, almost knocking right back into me. We're all rushing up the steps just as Lula and my mom come rushing down. They hit the two men with enough force to knock them off balance, tumbling right on top of me.

I make a sharp sound, wheezing, like someone let the air out of a balloon real fast, and then someone is gathering me up on my feet and patting me down like they're placing all my bones back together again. Only the aching reminds me that I have any bones at all.

Lula keeps going on about some moron who ate her jelly donut. I have to agree, that guy _is_ a moron if her thought he was going to get away with thieving one of Lula's snacks. Hal must have the same thought too because he asks: "How bad is he? Do you want us to, you know, get rid of anything?"

Though, there seems to be a consensus that, no, there is no dead body rotting away upstairs, so we all pile into our cars. I hitch a ride with Lula in the Firebird this time.

"Now what?" Lula asks, pulling out of the parking spot as she adjusts her cleavage with one hand.

"Drop me off at Rangeman," Mom says.


	2. Chapter 2

Cheap Thrills, Mostly

* * *

Rangeman is discrete. It is a seven story high almost secret that you wouldn't even know the name of if you didn't take the time to notice the small brass plate by the main door that reads: RANGEMAN in neat block letters. This place is about as simple as the man who runs it.

The bat cave resides on the top most floor where Ranger does whatever it is super heroes do in their spare time; the two floors below that house employee apartments; every other level downward from that is committed to scoping out the bad guys with a sort of—what I consider—high tech security operation. Meaning, the company primarily services clients in need of advanced level protection. I guess that sometimes includes my mom, too.

The parking garage attached to the building houses cars that only come in sleek black. They're hot, perhaps in more ways than one. Ranger runs his operations with secrets and questionable morals.

Ranger meets us in the garage, angling every foot of his hard toned body in front of the elevator door like a wall of dark steel, but far warmer. "Yo," he says.

"Yo, yourself," my mom says, and then they both look at me like most adults do when they want to talk about something they don't want you hearing.

I scuff my shoes against the ground, stuffing my hands in the shallow pockets of my shorts, "I'm not a child," I tell them, dragging off, lost like the years that separate me from true adulthood. I know that I am—a child that is—we all are. Sometimes when my parents fight they still tell each other they're acting like children; though, I don't see how that's such a bad thing all the time.

Ranger appraises me in the careful way that isn't meant to be noticed, but I can still feel his look in the heat of my cheeks, the same way I know when someone is talking about me across the classroom at the high school. "Well, you're certainly old enough to drive." He tells me.

"I hate to ask," my mom says. She could fill the small parking lot of the Quick-Mart with each car that has met a fatal end in her hands. Mom is usually vague when talking about her past escapades but once, over dinner, my dad had told me about the car that was smoked out with a rocket launcher. I'd spilled my soda laughing so hard, and it was hell to clean up but not, I expect, nearly as messy as the vehicular explosion.

Though, no matter the ambiguity of the past, I've had my fair share of first hand encounters with the unkind. Once, my mom and I were picking up a cake from the store for Dad's birthday. A feral FTA, meaning failure to appear, that my mom had been chasing around town for days ran up to the car, stripped his pants off, stuffed them in the gas tank of the car, and then proceeded to light the ratty denim on fire. "Who's the liar liar now?" he had asked. I think, technically, it had still been him since it had been his pants on fire.

Anyways, Mom had done a flying leap into me and sent the cake in my hands skidding across the pavement, opposite the direction of our own bodies. By the time the fire department made it to the scene the FTA was gone and the cake looked more gravel flavored than chocolate, the words melted away so that they said something far less welcoming than 'Happy Birthday'. That year we'd eaten ice cream for desert instead.

"You didn't," Ranger tells my mom, winking at me as he tosses over the keys.

I grin, clicking the button and following the sound of the car _beeping_ unlocked. It's a black jeep, sturdy, and I have to hoist myself up to get into the driver's side, sliding the leather seat forward almost all the way. "Don't worry," I tell him, rolling the window down, "I wont let her add another one to the list."

I think I almost see him smiling in the side-view mirror as I drive away.

Cherry calls me later that day. She asks if I'm going to the party. I want to ask if she's crazy; though, I'm sure I already know the answer, so all I say is no.

"Come on," she goads me, her words folding together into one, "you can pick me up and we'll go together."

I shake my head, but I know she can't see me so I make an indignant sound for good measure. "I don't have a car," I tell her. "What about yours?"

"Daddy needs it for _business_," she draws out the last word like business entails more than I could understand, more than she bothers to herself, "and Emily said she saw you driving in this shiny new jeep just under an hour ago."

"Emily who?" I ask, eyeing the car in question through the window of my mom's apartment. We have a perfect view of the back half of the lot, which comes in handy for scoping out potential serial killers lurking in the shadows, which, admittedly, happens more often than it should.

"Bartinelli," she sounds smug, "Emily Bartinelli."

"Bartinelli?" I scoff, "she can't see for shit. No, Bartinelli wears prescription level eye glasses, sits at the front of the room, and still can't take notes down right." I know this because I sat beside Emily in math last year and the one day I was sick I had to borrow her notes. I ended up failing that unit test.

"She has great facial recognition skills," Cherry tells me.

"Are you drunk?" I ask, rubbing at my temple.

"No!"

I pick Cherry up two hours later. The sun has gone down, bleeding out across the sky, and then falling away to black; clouds tumble in from the shore, full of salt water and smog, and I can feel the weight of the storm drawing down upon my hair, hairspray and all.

Cherry's house is a stand-alone brick building with high windows and a gated entrance. A dusty stretch of road leads up to the cast iron wall, shadowy in the night. Cherry's house hums; it always has, like their richness and energy comes from the air. I leave the jeep running and turn on the high beams, shooing away some of the darkness and lighting my way to the com and speaker piece attached to the side of the rail.

Their house worker answers my greeting. I can't exactly call him a butler because he gardens, too, and I can't exactly call him a gardener because I once saw him take out one of Cherry's ex boyfriends that was trying to sneak into the house. His voice is the regal sort that only makes my pre-party jitters worse, like I don't belong here, like he's telling me just that when, really, all he's saying is "Hello," and "I'll buzz you in," or even, "Please, Miss," when Cherry's mom Mrs. York—whom insists I call her by her first name, Catrine—tries to interrupt the call. She's always doing that, too, racing the nameless Schwarzen-butler to the call button.

"Sweetie!" Mrs. York says; her voice is lilting and contrasting with her worker-man. "Oh darling Mackenzie, Cherry will be right out."

Cherry comes rushing down the drive, the kitten heels of her shoes kicking up dust. She meets the gate as it opens and we each climb into the car. The interior lights throw our outfits into view and I see Cherry turn her nose up at the stitching pattern of my shirt. "I would have let you borrow a shirt," she tells me, buckling in. But I see the curt hemlines and clinging fabrics of her clothing and decide I wouldn't have wanted to borrow anything anyways.

"Hunter Vitali's house," Cherry directs me, leading my directions in a way that makes me think she's been there before.

The Vitali family is one of those long bred Italian households. Sometimes I'll see them at church when Great Grandma Bella makes me go with my dad. Hunter Vitali is in our year at school but only because he was held back for missing too many days of class in his freshman year. The oldest Vitali brother, Barney, just graduated from our high school. He's currently training in the police academy, a fact that makes me antsy if only because it means another connection my father may have to my social life. But Cherry only scoffs when I ask her if the eldest Vitali will be there. I hope that means he won't.

House parties always make me nervous, like I'm worried that my father will come in a break it up, or catch me doing something I shouldn't be. I try too hard to stay out of trouble, or at least that's what Cherry tells me. Really, I'm just trying to counteract the poor Plum luck that seems to follow me wherever I go.

But Joseph Morelli only shows up at the scenes of major crimes and I doubt that a few joints are enough to warrant his appearance. But word gets around, especially in places like the Burg, which is where the Vitalis live. It's a two story white house, the shutters are painted a bright red that I can make out even in the darkness. The floodlights are motion activated so that every time a lonely girl or a stumbling couple wanders by the flat concrete drive and postage-stamp yard are thrown into sharp relief. There's a kneeling statue of the Virgin Mary in the well-kept flowerbed. Tasteful. Maria Vitali is has won seven straight years of the Burg's best-maintained garden.

"You're sure Barney isn't going to be here?"

"Course," Cherry says, her heels already clicking down the sidewalk.


	3. Chapter 3

Cheap Thrills, Mostly

* * *

The house is crowded, the air thick and hot, and Cherry disappears only moments after entering the door. This is quite a feat, I think, for someone who so desperately wants to be seen.

I have always been most comfortable on the back porch of house parties. In the winters there is always a fire smoldering. Sometimes I'll throw things into it and see how long they take to burn. I once saw a guy throw up in a fire pit, too; the smell was so wretched that I didn't bother standing around to see how long it took to sizzle away. But there is no fire blazing now, nor are there any kids blazing up.

But Cherry was wrong. Barney is here. He's so much here that we make eye contact and I can feel myself shift. He has the gaze of a cop. Because he is one, because he's a cop at a house party and I'm trembling even if I haven't done anything to warrant my arrest.

I think: my dad is going to hear about this.

I think: Cherry is a liar.

I think: I have always known that Cherry is a liar.

"Here to supervise?" I ask, because I thought that might sound clever. But I'm not confident enough to pull off clever, not like Cherry. No, I'm only just nervous enough to pull off suspicious.

So Barney raises his eyebrow and asks me if he knows me from somewhere.

I want to tease him on the line that most certainly is not, but most certainly does, sound like a flirtation. I don't though. I just say: "This is a party." Because I'm good at stating the obvious but I'm not so good at clever.

And he laughs like I'm funny. But I'm not. Cherry never laughs at my jokes. I'm only ever funny in my head.

The party spills into the night for a moment like my guts feel like they are on the floor but they're not. I know this because my hands are on my stomach and I can feel that everything is still intact.

A girl stumbles out onto the porch and she's drunk. I mean rip roaring drunk. If there was a fire lit in the pit then I think she just might have puked in it. I recognize this girl too because Cherry likes to make fun of her and I accidentally gave her this awful nickname a few years back that seems to have stuck.

Nobody ever calls Maria 'The Rat' Rabease by her real name. They either call her Rat, Beasy, or The Rat With Rabies if they're feeling witty and particularly superfluous at the time of greeting. She'll answer to any name and she'll do it with a smile; I'm not sure if it's because Rat thinks we're all just good friends and having fun or it it's because she has some pretty sharp incisors and likes to show them off. It could be both.

Tonight I call her Beasy because she's drunk and I'm trying to be a better person and that's what the nicer people at school call her.

Beasy stumbles, her sweaty hands leaving horror-movie-marks on the glass sliding door, and then repays my politeness towards her by puking on my shoes. Not my best thank you.

Barney groans and it's like were both just wondering why we're here right now, leaning over this girl who never learned how to hold her liquor. "Do you know this girl?" He asks, lifting Beasy up from under her armpits and carrying her in through the open door.

"Yeah," I say, because I do, but somehow it still feels like the wrong answer. Maybe it's because he's already receding into the darkened household and I'm left outside hoping the vomit doesn't seep through my socks.

It doesn't, by the way. Instead, Barney comes back to see me shedding the filthy footwear, a pair of worn work boots in his hands. "These'll fit big but it's better than nothing," he says, dropping them down in front of me. I know they're heavy even before I wear them. They're made of that thick brown material not unlike leather, you know, the kind that makes clunky noises every time you walk in them. They feel odd on my bare feet; my own toes smooth over the sweat worn creases someone with much larger feet had left there previously.

"Did you arrest her?" This question comes from my own mouth without consent and I blush.

Barney looks incredulous. "What, you mean did I hand cuff her to the toilet?"

I try to scoff because that's what Cherry does when someone makes her feel stupid but it only comes out like a strangled cough, the kind a cat makes when it's puking up a hairball. I blush again.

"I called her parents," he rubs his knuckles against his jaw line, "and I'd call yours too if I didn't want Morelli all over my ass about it." So he figured out who I was. Maybe he always knew. Maybe that was a line.

I stand up, hands on hips. My dad would laugh and say I look like my mom if he really was here. "Then why are you even at this stupid party in the first place?"

"If the party is so stupid then why are you here?"

That's a good question, and the good questions never come with answers to them. It's odd to stay quiet when you're upset like this, like mad but not mad enough, your face all warm and your feet clomping around in another man's shoes. The music is loud and makes me ears ring double time. "I'm not," I say, and then, "I'm leaving."

I thought Cherry would be difficult to persuade into leaving but when she saw me she hooked her arm right through mine and said something about running all over the house looking for me and how she hopes it was because I was in that locked room upstair getting laid.

In the car she leans back, finger on the automated recline to push it into an-almost-lying-down position. "Fucking cops," she mutters. He eyes are closed, forehead gleaming. She's a party girl in sequins and patent leather. I don't know what I am.

She mutters a few more things about cops and I wonder if she's forgotten that my father is one. Probably not. Finally she tells me: "Hunter said his brother showed up to shut down the party!"

"No, shit?" I ask. Sometimes its nice to receive an answer without asking.

"Shit is right. Came right up to him—we were going upstairs to his room—tapped him on the shoulder and threatened to call some of his cop buddies to shut us down if we didn't do it ourselves."

"No shit?" I say again. "Do you want to get a donut?"

"Shit is right," Cherry nods vaguely, "I'd love a donut."

I haven't been getting much of what I want lately but maybe a donut is enough right now. The Tasty Pastry is still open, there are always high school kids working the counter on late summer nights because everyone thinks that high school kids never sleep. Maybe they're right, too. We definitely never sleep in the sight of a tasty pastry, saccharine and pink, my jaw aches at the thought of it.

I order a whole dozen of Boston crème at the counter. As it turns out there's no high schooler working a late shift; tonight it's a short man, stubby, with fat hands that stretch out to the whole size of the rubber glove. I wonder if he's been eating on the job. I don't blame him if he is.

He seems like a nice guy, tired, so even though him sort of mashes the corner of my donut box I still leave two bucks in the plastic tip jar. It's one of those tip jars obviously made by the workers, a washed out extra large cheese puff container with a handwritten TIPS sign in black sharpie. Not very aesthetic, but it serves its purpose well enough. In fact, it serves its purpose so well that the jar is almost full.

"Hey," I ask, eyeing the tip jar, "do you have a job application?"

The guy nods in a sort of slow motion way. "Yeah, but we ain't got any openings."

"I'll take one anyways, you know, you can keep it on file maybe." I've been looking for a job for ages.

"Maybe," the guy seems doubtful but he goes to get the application anyways, still in his slow motion manner.

When I go to sit down Cherry has already eaten three donuts. That's something I like about Cherry: she can snack on anything. She isn't one of those girls that never eats, and there are a lot of those. They take up whole tables in our cafeteria, which doesn't make a lot sense to me because if you're not eating then why are you in the cafeteria? Maybe they just like to look at the food but I feel like that'd only make you even hungrier.

I'm on my second donut, Cherry on her fifth, when this man comes barging in. He's in all black, a ski mask over his head, the lips sewn shut in a way that makes me think he never took home ec in high school. He's carrying this tiny gun, it's almost laughable how small it is, except it's not so laughable because he uses it to shoot the counter worker straight through the stomach. He even dies in slow motion.

Cherry screams and I think I might too only I can't hear myself. Maybe my ears are still ringing from the party, maybe they're ringing from the sound of the gunshot. I do know that I tumble over in my seat, my arms all stiff at my sides. I feel useless, feet heavy with the boots.

And then the ringing must have stopped because I hear the man with the tiny gun say: "Tell your father you're next if he doesn't get me what I want."

I think that's rather ambiguous, but who am I to judge a man with a gun in his hand?

And then, I suppose they have a job opening now.


	4. Chapter 4

Cheap Thrills, Mostly

* * *

I sound so calm because this is a retelling, a revision. Because I don't want to go back and read about how loud I was screaming or why my cheeks are stained mascara black. I've written that scene ten different ways but that was the best version; or, it's the one I tell the police, at least. Except for what _he_ said at the end. Cherry told me to keep my mouth shut about that and I do, it isn't so hard.

I wasn't lying about the job, though. There is an opening.

I wrote a version where the man behind the counter stands up in slow motion and we all laugh at the end. There's no threat but instead the man in the mask says: "this is all an act." Or maybe he'd said dream. It doesn't matter, really, they mean the same thing anyways: it didn't really happen.

They wouldn't have believed that version though. So I tell them the one where I'm useless and my ears are ringing too loud to hear anything. They don't expect much of me. I'm just a little girl.

Ranger showed up first. It was dark when he got there, the streetlight shot out and the bakery lights switched off like the killer thought he could hide us there until morning. Maybe he'd thought that Cherry and I had died of shock and didn't want anyone to find and report our three corpses until morning.

Ranger's body was wound tight, I could feel it in the way he lifted me into the seat of my chair that he must of put back upright and pressed his hands into the sides of my arms real tight in a faraway almost-hug. I got the sense of being put back together again once more.

I wish I would stop falling apart.

He must ask me if I'm all right and I must respond in someway, in some dream word or real word. It doesn't matter. Either way Ranger always knows the truth. But I can't hear it, or in my memory I can't hear it, because there are red and blue lights and they make everything look quiet.

I remember sitting in the front seat of my Dad's old cop car. He doesn't drive one of those anymore but when he did I was small and would trace my tiny fingers over the word POLICE. That word is safety. Anyways, I would sit in the front seat even though I was too small to, and the seatbelt would come up too high so that it was across my neck instead of my chest. My feet could never touch the floor either but when you're so small your feet are never really ever touching the floor. I'd tell him, "Sirens, Daddy! Sirens." And he'd laugh. And the sirens would come on. And he would know he isn't allowed but he would also know he's a rule breaker and he that he loves his little girl.

That story is a retelling also, but it's true this time. I promise.

My father comes with those sirens again and you can see the red and blue lights crease in the scar that slices through his brow. It occurs to me in that moment that I've never known how he got that scar.

He speaks to Ranger quickly and soft in that way that grown ups do when they don't want you to hear. After that I'm given a blanket, except it's not cold. I take it anyways. My father and Ranger don't leave my side all night and it occurs to me that this is probably the most time either of them has spent around one another at once. They don't talk after that first conversation though so maybe that's why it's okay.

The first woman to question me doesn't look up a whole lot so I'm not sure what her face looks like except for at a tilt and all full of shadows from the flashing of the emergency lights. She asks me what my name is and to tell me what happened tonight. I tell her I don't know what she means. A lot happened tonight. And then a second person comes over, a paramedic, and ushers me away. He looks upset at the woman for some reason but she didn't bother me.

The second woman to question me is my mother. No one ushers me away from her though I thought that would have been nice of them. I don't think she approves of the length of my skirt because she seems upset for some reason. Her and Dad talk for a moment, they must be planning on sending me to a privet school where I won't be wearing such short skirts.

I tell them I'm sorry for wearing such a short skirt. "I wont do it again," I say.

My mother starts crying.


End file.
